Episode 1330: Rough Drafts
Date February 1, 2019 Summary Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about rumors and the offseason, then answer listener emails about forming a team from remaining free agents, the definition of “Baseball IQ,” small-market teams banding together, the best thing for a team to be bad at, incentivizing teams to win, and whether front offices are planning for a work stoppage, plus Stat Blasts about the worst drafts ever, Johnnie LeMaster, and Ketel Marte and closing banter about a dream and the upcoming season preview series. Then (53:49), Ben talks to listener Anne Marie Chua Lee about anime as a rich, overlooked source of baseball entertainment, touching on series including Gurazeni: Money Pitch, Major 2nd, Ace of the Diamond, and Princess Nine. Topics * Free Agent team * Baseball IQ definition * Small market team up * Best stat to be bad at * Rewarding winning * Katel Marte breakout season * Work stoppage possibility * Dream Jeff * Prevalence of baseball Anime * Popular baseball anime * Anime available on Cruncyroll Intro * Foo Fighters, "February Stars" Interstitial * Tom Waits, "Big in Japan" Outro * The Move, "Vote for Me" Banter * Offseason rumors * Is this offseason bad? * Season Preview Series Email Questions * Eric: Pitchers and catchers report in about 2 weeks. As of today how good of a team could you construct using only remaining mlb free agents? I feel like this team would project to win the nl east or al central. * Tanner: Is there a consensus around the definition of the term "Baseball IQ?" Are there specific actions that a player can make that gives them the reputation of having a high or low Baseball IQ? Or is it as simple as not making errors (physical or mental)? Personally, I associate the term with well-timed baserunning derring-do and unusual defensive plays like throwing behind runners. Could it also extend to more subtle things like identifying pitch sequencing, properly anticipating pickoff moves, or always hitting the cutoff man? * Nathan (Patreon): As a dual citizen in Brewers/Royals land, the Lorenzo Cain travels had me thinking along these lines: So what if two small market teams entered into a partnership to aid each other for mutual benefit by matching competitive cycles? So team A is currently rebuilding, agrees to send all their established players who are useful to team B exclusively (as long as B wants them) and team B sends back top prospects timed for team A’s likely ascendancy, the idea being there is minimal haggling and both teams send their best. Then as team A ascends the direction of exchange is reversed. Would this be any better for those teams than the standard approach? It would also allow for interesting dual fandom opportunities... * Kolby: Almost every non-Yankees fan has had to suffer through a year when their team stinks. Let’s pretend that a bad team is above average in two of the following three areas: hitting, starting pitching, or relief pitching. However, the team is so bad in the third category that it causes the team to lose 90+ games. My question is: Which category is the best to be bad at from a fan’s perspective? Again, the team is going to lose the same number of games no matter what. It’s just a matter of which category would be most frustrating as the primary culprit for losing those games. (Obviously, it would be maddening for relievers to be almost entirely responsible for a team’s failure, but I think I’d go with that one. At some point, it would sink in that the team just wasn’t going anywhere that year, and I could just go to bed after the 6th or 7th having enjoyed all the baseball I watched and learn to detach myself from the results. That said, if they were in a bad division and were theoretically in contention until maybe June, that’s a long time to be frustrated.) Defense and even base running could be thrown in here, but I imagine it’s incredibly unlikely that a team could have good pitching and hitting and yet still be terrible because of either defense or base running. * Tom: Is there a way that the MLBPA could push to incentivize being in the middle 1/3 of baseball? There are clear incentives to be the worst team in baseball, but I think MLB should give organizations motivation to be OAK and TB: Teams that are in good divisions with lower payroll/terrible markets, but try to compete every year. Maybe some sort of tiered lottery system for the draft/compensation that takes into account winning/market size/spending. If nothing else, maybe this helps middle and small market teams increase their window to compete. * Bobby: What do y'all think about putting a win/loss factor into the revenue sharing system? Sort every team that receives revenue sharing by their record and give the most to the team with the most wins, and so on. You'd have to scale it enough that it will really hurt to be at the bottom and give an impetus to compete harder the following year too. It seems like that would help with the "teams don't have to try to win because they are all but guaranteed profit before the season ever starts" problem that your previous guest Neil deMause bemoaned. * Henry: In your recent interview with Neil deMause (episode 1327), he outlined the lack of financial incentive for teams and their owners to win. In short, revenue has been largely fixed and/or guaranteed, so the best way to maximize profits is to minimize expenses. Makes (depressing) sense. So, how could winning be incentivized? The players have been incentivized for ages, receiving the "Players' Share" of post season gate revenue, originally, I think, to keep them from feeling the need to consort with gamblers and fix games. Now the owners are (sort of) fixing seasons. So what if the MLBPA (or the owners themselves, in an alternate fantasy economic universe) created an annual fund that would pay out a huge lump sum to the World Series winner and loser? The "Owners' Award." It would work like this: the players put aside 150 million dollars to be awarded to the winning owners; World Series winner gets 100 million, loser gets 50 million. Boom, write you a check, go buy a yacht, the "Flags Fly Forever." If an owner is balking at 300 million for Bryce Harper, it's easy enough to imagine him getting you to a world series. So, it's really only 250 million. Or 200, if you think Bryce will win you won. And for the players, it's not actually that much money. With 1,200 players on 40 man rosters, that averages 125,000 dollars per player per year - small potatoes, if it incentivizes higher salaries. How big do you think the payout would have to be for an idea like this to work? * Mark Eschen (San Bruno, CA): I was just looking at the remarkable career stats for the number 6 overall pick in the 1973 amateur draft, Johnnie LeMaster. Perhaps best know for once wearing a game jersey where his name has replaced with BOO, a common greeting he received from the San Francisco faithful, over his 12 year career, LeMaster amassed an astounding career WAR of MINUS 5.4. So my question is this, which is worse way to waste an early 1st round draft pick: picking someone like LeMaster who spends over a decade on your MLB roster as a sub-replacement player, or someone like Glenn Tuft, who was taken with the pick right before LeMaster and spent four years in the minors, barely made it to AA, before leaving the game. * Damian: Between and number of articles and podcasts this winter and previously, I've begun to absorb the idea that many people in the industry are taking for granted that there will be a work stoppage eventually. Has this view trickled into front offices to the degree that they themselves are now further disinclined to spend because there is going to be a work stoppage? Have we begun to enter a vicious circle? I've been assuming that players don't get paid during a work stoppage. Even if that were true though, when talking about a contract like Machado's or Harper's, a work stoppage in the near future would cost you one of the early surplus value seasons that offset the expected losses from the later at or below value seasons. It seems like your degree of confidence about a coming work stoppage would influence your pursuit of either player, and your prudent lack of pursuit would make the work stoppage that much more likely. It's in the interest of baseball for some team to pay both players a bunch of money, but It's not in the interest of that many particular teams to be the one to step up to do that. StatBlast * The worst all-time draft is the 1974 Cubs, whose draft netted -6.6 career WAR. * There have been 12 drafts in history where no players drafted actually made the majors, up to 2014. Notes * Fangraphs has the free agent team at 46.1 WAR. * "Its more people that hear us talk about how good Mike Trout would be if he played baseball on a horse" - Jeff Links https://blogs.fangraphs.com/effectively-wild-episode-1330-rough-drafts/ Link to free-agent depth chart Link to team draft data Link to Anne Marie’s store Link to Gurazeni Link to Major 2nd Link to Ace of the Diamond Link to Princess Nine Link to SABR Award voting Link to Jeff’s nominated piece Link to Ben’s nominated piece Link to preorder The MVP Machine Category:Episodes Category:Guest Episodes Category:Email Episodes